Publisher: Search Engine Watch Blog

Is your website mobile-friendly? 2016 marks the first year that mobile traffic surpassed desktop traffic, yet many businesses have still neglected to take mobile devices into account. Their websites aren't optimized for mobile search, and simply don't look good on phones and tablets. Not only does this cause frustrated users to leave the site, it's a big problem for your SEO as well. As of April 21, 2015,

Last week, Google announced that Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are making their way into the organic mobile SERPs . While AMP is not a ranking signal , at least not yet, this announcement is a milestone for the initiative that Google launched earlier this year in an effort to speed up the mobile web. The search giant's desire to make mobile web pages load faster is obvious: slow,

Google Trends Explore tool launches a new interface this week, but is it much better? Unlike other Google changes , the only people that would notice this update are marketers, researchers and the periodic journalist from time to time. I've examined the new look and feel, as well as features and functionality to see how impactful this change can be. Below is a quick breakdown of what's changed, and what hasn't: New features (mostly look and feel,

As video becomes an integral part of the social web , live-streaming has fast become one of the hottest trends. Spurred by the early success of Meerkat and Periscope, in April, Facebook launched Live, its own live-streaming feature. Reportedly, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is "obsessed" with live-streaming and believes Live is critical to his company's future. With that in mind, it's probably not a coincidence that he personally announced Live's launch, writing,

There are more than 100 million users on Snapchat and they are not just millennials . And as Snapchat introduces more unique features, it continues to grow as a valuable marketing tool. *Source: GlobalWebIndex 1. What is Snapchat? Snapchat was launched in 2011, primarily created as a messaging app used to share photos and videos with friends. Since its birth, it has developed into much more than just a tool for messaging. According to eMarketer,

You know, apart from the most obvious search engine. And possibly the second most obvious one too. In fact I'll start again, what are the eight most popular search engines after Google and Bing? The first list below contains the most popular search engines currently available, ordered by most to least popular in the US. The ranking is according to eBiz , it's in order of estimated unique monthly visitors and is accurate as of August 2016.

What are the key factors behind an effective m-commerce site, one that will meet the needs of the modern multichannel consumer? This week sees the release of our new m-commerce report, DNA of a Great M-Commerce Site Part 2: The 12 Pillars of Mobile Design , and here we present those pillars' 1. Mobile-first web design The mobile-first philosophy dictates that all websites - mobile, tablet, PC - are designed, optimised and developed for the mobile device, connection,

I have a question for you: what's the program you first turn to when creating your ad copy? If you're like the majority of people today, your answer would be Excel. Unfortunately, that might be the wrong answer. While Excel is a fantastic program and is central to our day-to-day life in PPC , it's not the best place to start with brainstorming ad copy. Why? If you're writing text while constantly checking the length in the corresponding LEN() column,

Pssst, hey did you miss it? Google Analytics quietly rolled out a new feature for measuring AdWords performance in April that could have easily been overlooked, but is packed with data and happens to be one of my favorite features right now. Let's have a closer look' The feature release On April 11, 2016, Google Analytics posted " release notes " with a laundry list of features that have been added.

Come to San Francisco this August 29-31 as we bring together the leading minds in digital marketing for not one, not two, but three separate events, each focusing on a different aspect of digital. Here's a rundown of what's coming up, some of which requires a fee and some which is completely free - so no excuses! 1.

If you've ever used Schema.org to mark up your webpages , you'll know it's a great way to help search engines interpret your content and create more relevant, rich and attractive search results. But its uses don't begin and end with webpages. In this guide, I'll look at some of the handy things you can do with email markup. This will include adding quick actions to your emails,

Here we'll take a look at the practice of content syndication and answer a few questions' What is it? How do I get started? How do I find content syndication platforms? Is it helpful for SEO ? Please note, this is a new version of our previously published guide to content syndication published in 2013, written by Andrew Delamarter. All the information has been revised and updated. What is content syndication? Content syndication is the process of pushing your blogpost,

Six months ago, Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages initiative was only available in the 'Top Stories' carousel of it search results. Now Google has announced that AMP support will be rolled out across the entire organic search results page. In a blog post published just a couple of hours ago, Google is previewing exactly how this new layout will look. In fact,

Online reviews can in some cases make or break a business, so it's no surprise that many businesses take their online reviews very, very seriously. But some take their concern over what customers are saying about them online too far, and try to silence customer criticism with legal threats. Others have incorporated legalese such as non-disparagement clauses into contracts that seeks to prevent them from posting negative reviews in the first place.

Video marketing certainly isn't new, but the growing need for visual content across distribution channels has turned it into one of the biggest trends of 2016. Hyperfine media has created a useful infographic highlighting the individual trends within video marketing, and here is my analysis of each of them. Branded video content It is predicted that video will account for 69% of all internet traffic by 2017. For brands,

SEO at its most technical level is all about the minutiae. The small, precise details that no-one else may notice, but can make the world of difference to your website's place on the SERPs. When your hours of tireless fiddling, reiterating and testing pay off with an improved ranking, it can be a genuinely exhilarating feeling. Especially when it results in direct traffic or revenue growth. However, that doesn't stop the work from being tireless, thankless or, at times,

One method of connecting with users on mobile, which most brands likely wouldn't consider, is by using mobile wallets . Mobile wallets, despite being native to both iOS and Android, are still on their way up to becoming a mainstream payment method . New research commissioned by Urban Airship suggests that not only is usage of mobile wallets becoming more widespread,

You're no SEO beginner . You've sorted your technical SEO. Your site is being crawled regularly and Google is quick to index new pages on your site. You've got a solid keyword strategy and you've implemented all your main terms across site. You're in your site's Search Console daily, and you catch Rand's Whiteboard Fridays every week. But yet' you haven't seen much organic growth in months.

Do you work in digital marketing and do you love it? Are you new to the industry and feeling overwhelmed by it? Either way, all this constant change means people in this industry are always learning and sharing their ideas. In case you hadn't noticed, the digital world is all around us. For those people still trying to fend off the 'future' by disengaging from the digital world, the tide is turning.